


Night and Day

by deuil



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuil/pseuds/deuil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To fear is to be human." </p><p>What Basch fears, how he fears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night and Day

To fear is to be human. Basch knows that there isn't a single soul in the world that isn't susceptible to this rule, and that once one forgets how to fear, a layer of humanity is stripped from them-- a layer, just one, but an essential one, akin to forgetting the feeling of hunger, or thirst, or longing. It's a layer, but a layer that Basch thinks about often, on nights where the sky is calm and the winds give him reprieve enough to cast his gaze backwards into the past. His mind wanders to memories of wars fought, of moments passed in a torrent of events and broken dialogue, and slowly he picks apart the times where he'd truly felt afraid: arrows whistling in front of his nose, lives being ended, recollections of standing on the verge of a precipice. He can't recall being frightened at the time-- the emotion comes from him now, in the present, a slow chill of nostalgia and a jump of the heart that speaks to him, whispering, "ah, I was afraid." It's a confirmation.

And on the days that Basch feels inclined to remember these instances, what he recalls first and foremost is Noah, the blue-hazel of his twins' eyes, mired in doubt and rage and sorrow and terror, and Basch can't help but wonder if, when the two of them were born, if Noah hadn't gotten all the share of Basch's nightmares as he was brought into the world minutes after Basch emerged, as if those necessary emotions had been an afterthought. Recollection of cold days and nights in Nalbina come next, always the same-- Noah would shed his helmet and look at him, the eyes of a cornered and wounded animal, hatred burning brightly under that layer, that layer of humanity that surfaced whenever the barriers were pulled down, armor discarded in favor of flesh and blood. His twin, on the other side of the same coin, wearing Basch’s immediate layer of fear. 

Noah'd kept it for his own.

Basch remembers the lightless underground dungeon, the shackles that bound his wrists to the sides of the iron bars and kept him there, staring and unrelenting against the fervent and furious wishes of his brother. Did Noah want him to bend? Did Noah want him to shatter? To ask for mercy? To beg for forgiveness? Perhaps he did-- he wanted all of those things. Maybe Noah wanted to be satisfied, to be absolved of his own faults, to tell Basch that he isn't the only one who has to know how it _feels_ , the isolation, the _doubt_. Maybe Noah wanted salvation, and Basch didn't give it to him, knowingly.

For two years, the two of them had fought this silent battle.

And only days after his liberation, Balthier had once asked Basch, under dim illuminations of a slightly inebriated haze in Bhujerba: “do you still hold your grudges against your kin? For what he did, I mean.” Basch had smiled against the rim of his glass, watching the amber contents of it pool under his fingertips as he thought of insects encased in syrup, suspended in space. “I’d tortured him as much as he’d done to me,” he’d replied, recalling his unwillingness to give Noah that inch, to give Noah something that most others would have relented so easily in his position. For all of his understanding of his twin, for all of his understanding of his twins’ fears and pleas, Basch hadn’t given in. He had given Noah his doubts, and for that, Basch still feels guilt. Irrational, yes, but two years of limbo was likely to make one think of such things.

“All gloom and no resolution,” Balthier had said, raising his own glass in a mock-toast that indicated that he’d press the matter no further. It was making his drink taste rather bad, the sky pirate had drawled in his customary, offhanded manner, and he was rather in no mood to talk to martyrs, thank you very much, Captain. 

_And even then, I am no saint_ , Basch had thought as he smiled at Balthier in return, dropping the subject entirely to pursue more savory courses of conversation. Though Basch knew then and knows now that it wasn't a resolution that he’d been looking for, knows that neither Noah nor himself had hoped for forgiveness during those brief but ever-long sessions in Nalbina. Basch had done all he could. He had done all that he knew how to. All that he must.

There’s no self-deprecation there, in this memory. No self-hatred. Only acceptance and a quiet reaffirmation of his duty towards himself, towards others, towards his brother, which is rekindled by a strange sense of familiarity. Basch is still in that cage, forged from many things—from Landis, from Nabudis, from Nalbina, from Noah.

He knows that he won't spend eternity in this cage, and knows that there will come a time when he steps out of it, will look back at the place that Noah and he had created for more than nineteen years. And he'll look on that experience, of staring his brother in the face and denying him and holding strong, and feel the fear that he’d for so long left only to his twin. It will come, and he’ll hold to it as fondly as he can muster, with all the resolve that he always has, with all the fortitude that he’s cultivated throughout his years.


End file.
